Page 64 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

Map 3 - Timezones
This is a great Map for telling stories. The story starts in Timezone 1 leading into the Chorus, which sums up a theme with the title. This moves to a new situation in Timezone 2, which recolors the theme of the Chorus (the title) before moving to Timezone 3 or delivering the payoff either in the Bridge or a third Verse (if required).
Throughout this Map, the Chorus remains the binding or common element that unifies the song. The Bridge can also be used to resolve the story.
Timezones is (pardon the pun) a timeless development strategy, having worked as well in the 1950s ("Anything Goes," Ella Fitzgerald) as it does in 2016 ("7 Years," Lukas Graham, which is #1 in the UK pop charts as I type). You can even see an element of Timezones being used in John Newton's "Amazing Grace," which was published in 1779.
Given that this Map lends itself to telling stories, Timezones is perfect for Country songs, Pop, CCM, Southern Gospel and Worship. It's a brilliant opportunity to demonstrate the craft of lyric writing in that the Chorus (the title) ideally should be identical but also work for every Timezone. When this is done well it nearly always creates a "wow" moment that is not just impressive but is often moving and makes for a highly memorable song.
Whether Timezone 3 is in a Bridge or a third Verse is a creative judgment about the length of the song. If the Verses are already quite long, then it may be better to have Timezone 3 in a Bridge, which can be (and maybe should be for the sake of contrast) a lot shorter in terms of number of lines. Or maybe not even have a Timezone 3 at all.
One word about tenses: it's very easy to get totally messed up on tenses when writing a Timezones song. If you're not careful, you can end up spending half of your precious words trying to tell people what year it is! So one way out, which I used in the song below, is to have the whole song in the present tense but signpost the Timezone in a narrative way. It simplifies everything.
What does Timezones look like?
Timezones is great at presenting two or three time-bound scenes or scenarios to demonstrate whatever the message is in the Chorus. It automatically enables you to move the story on because, well, the Timezones do it for you. Two things you need to think carefully about:
1. Ensuring the Chorus works equally well after each Timezone.
2. Making sure there is an appropriate payoff in the Bridge/Verse 3.
Timezones can be represented as follows: